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We’re thrilled that several of our Oxford MBA students and faculty have the opportunity to attend the event and help out our friends over at SOCAP.   They’ll be keeping us posted on all the latest and their perspectives on the gathering. If you can’t make it to Amsterdam, be sure to follow along online and keep up with all the buzz on twitter at #socapeurope (Tweets are a’flying!). You can also watch the entire event via livestream. We’re excited to see what comes out of the gathering – a few hours in, and already looks like exciting things. For one, check out the newly released Social Investment Manual by the Schwab Foundation.  Looks like a must read.

SOCAP, the conference at the intersection of money and meaning, came to Europe last night at the Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam. Since I was volunteering at the conference, I was unable to witness the  keynote speech by HRH Princess Maxima, UN Secretary General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development.

The lazy yet dominant financial market preconception of social entrepreneurs is of fluffy tree-hugging do-gooders who couldn't cut it in the 'real world'. Indeed, my peers from business school and the financial markets in the City still think I am simply going through a 'charity phase' and will eventually return to the fold. But I'm not going to. I have been lucky to come across a pioneering market place and I'm signed up for the duration. Social enterprise is about sustainability, financial viability, commercial solutions to social needs. It is not about inefficiencies of investment, or the black hole of grant donations. The guys at SOCAP in San Francisco name this space the intersection of money and meaning. What are we at UnLtd doing to help increase the awareness of this intersection? For a start we've just launched the Big Venture Challenge to accelerate the entry of business angels into the social investment market place. We are looking to find 25 of the most ambitious social entrepreneurs with scalable ventures - and then 'de-risk' any investments by providing matched funding and some high calibre support from ourselves, Accenture, Deutsche Bank, Coutts, Thomson Reuters, Hogan Lovells and others.

This is certainly an international phenomenon, albeit operating at different paces throughout the world, but with clear exporting/importing of talent, knowledge and experience: The UK market place has been swamped with interest in how to replicate our own work with both government-led as well as private delegations from Canada, Vietnam, China, Thailand, Japan, Australia and Continental Europe just in recent months. UnLtd ourselves now have three sister organisations, which operate different business models, but with the same vision of helping social entrepreneurs in India, Thailand and South Africa, with many more in the offing. Similarly, the UK's School for Social Entrepreneurs has expanded to Australia and has many more international partners queuing up. Volans is now operating out of London and Singapore.There is the Global Impact Investing Network and the Global Impact Investing Reporting Standards coming out of the US but with international intentions (it's in the names!)There are (formative) social stock exchanges/trading/donation platforms in the US, Singapore, Italy, Brazil, UK, South Africa, KenyaThere is a well established European Venture Philanthropy Association, with a sister organisation opening in SingaporeWe have SOCAP Europe for the first time bringing a US conference to The NetherlandsThere are also a glut of crowd-funding mechanisms evolving to avoid traditional financial machinery, harnessing the Facebook generation: Kiva, MyC4, CrowdCube, Profunders, Buzzbnk, Ethex, Markets for Good.